# Can you tell just from hearing a voice if a person is African American? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 25, 2004, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302 "2004-03-25T06:20:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/21 "2004-03-25T17:31:28Z")
There are black people that sound exactly like white people and are virtually indistinguishable over the phone, but these are rare cases. The vast majority of the time it’s very easy to tell. A good chunk of human cognitive power is devoted to language recognition and processing after all. Also, IMO, even with black people that “talk white” there is a slight inherent (due to vocal physiology) tonal difference to black voices and white voices with white voices having a more “reedy” timbre overall. This is not to say there aren’t “reedy” sounding black people and and “rounder”, sonorous sounding white people (I’m one), but overall there is (to my ears) a slight inherent difference in timbre beyond just accent and phrasing . ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/22 "2004-03-25T18:36:04Z")
Up here in Canada, we mostly don’t much care. That said, apart from accents it’s usually hard to tell. On the other hand, as **missbunny** says, there sometimes is a difference in the voice. I can’t recall ever hearing that Paul Robeson sound from anybody of a different race. It would be interesting if somebody replicated the experiment **aldiboronti** cites, but without using words, just some vowel sounds. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/23 "2004-03-25T20:23:16Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > Well, I have white friends who are African-American, and black friends who are neither African nor American, so I’d say, no, you cannot tell someone’s ancestry and current legal citizenship from their voice. I think **Faucet** was referring to cultural affinity, not “current legal citizenship”. I doubt my great-grandmother would have objected to being described as Italian after she got her U.S. citizenship. In my experience, it’s really easy to tell whether people are black from their voices. And a black person who speaks American English without an accent is likely to be African-American. Every so often you run into someone like Bryant Gumbel, or the black plastic surgeon on “Extreme Makeover” who sounds really white, but I think those are just the exceptions that prove the rule. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/24 "2004-03-25T20:44:48Z")
Couldn’t this be explained simply by what “types” of voices a person hears when he/she is developing language skills? I’d imagine a toddler that’s learning to talk would do so by simply parroting the folks around him – and if those foks speak with a “black” or “southern” or “British” accent, that’s what he’ll pick up, yes? And I know there are speaking schools you can attend to change your voice. Apparently they’re really popular with media companies, who want their reporters to have region-neutral voices. ---
**Author:** ![Faucet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@Faucet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Faucet)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/25 "2004-03-25T20:47:17Z")
_Some white dudes who are “ghetto” sound awfully “black” to me_ I have to disagree with this statement because it totally misses the point of what im saying…it does not matter whether the person talks ghetto or not, it’s in the sound of the words not the words themselves…otherwise some very good insights. One more thing though, ever hear a black child speak? I can tell the children as well as the adults with what I’d say is a 95 per cent accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/26 "2004-03-25T21:28:21Z")
I’m with those who say they can. I think it’s a tonal thing, and for me it only works on those in the US. No matter what the educational level, or socio-economic standing, although the accuracy does fall off the higher it gets. The only ones I really can’t nail down with any accuracy are those with a thick Boston accent. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/27 "2004-03-25T21:29:39Z")
I can detect “blackness” through voice. It’s pitch (we have deeper voices) and something else involved. Leotine Price once said that she can distinguish a black opera singer from a white one, just from the quality of their voice. Does anyone know if voice-over work is disproportionately represented by “black” voices? It seems like it is to me. ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/28 "2004-03-25T21:53:22Z")
In my job I speak by phone to lots of well-educated folks, whom I often meet later at conferences. I’ve found that my assumptions about a speaker’s race usually turn out to be correct, and I’d attribute it to a trace of Southern cadence in many black people’s voices - regardless of where they’re currently living. The sort of accent I’m thinking of is exemplified in retired newscaster [Charlayne Hunter-Gault](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ww/hunter-gault.html), who grew up in Georgia. But I’ve heard weaker version so fit in black speakers living in many parts of the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/29 "2004-03-25T22:34:33Z")
And that should read, “versions of it,” drattit. ---
**Author:** ![epepke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9de0a6/32.png) [@epepke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epepke)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2004, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/30 "2004-03-25T23:35:47Z")
> [@Faucet](#): > > I’m African American and 95 per cent of the time I can tell simply by voice if someone is Black just by hearing them speak whether it is a man, woman, boy or girl. > It is just something very distinct in the voice and it doesn’t matter if the person is using slang or talking proper. Is it true do we really have what I heard someone describe as a black accent…although to me I wouldn’t really describe it as an accent because that seems like and understatement. > What would you say? I’m a honkey, and I can tell, too. However, as has been pointed out, this isn’t cross-cultural. Most African-British sound the same as European-British. ---
**Author:** ![slipster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@slipster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slipster)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/31 "2004-03-26T00:25:11Z")
Scholars have argued for a long time why it is that there appears to be a distinctive black accent in the U.S., while white people have regional accents. I suspect **Gary T.**'s explanation is largely correct. I used to work for a legal services organization which was required, for statistical purposes, to keep track of the race of the people who were helped over the phone. I am white. When I started I was told that I shouldn’t bother to ask people their race, that I would “just know”. And I generally did. I recall once, though, that I received a call from a woman who lived in a predominantly African-American community and whose first name (which I have since forgotten), seemed unusual for a white person. I explained that I had to ask what her race was as she had what broadcasters sometimes call a “neutral” (that is, frankly, a “white”-sounding voice). She was quite pleasant about it, and said that she was black but that people sometimes assumed she was white from her voice. Although it’s rare, I’ve known white people who flat-out refuse to believe that someone who is obviously African-American is black if they have a “white-sounding” voice. A small hijack: I am of Irish descent, and very fair skinned. Some years back I worked in an after school program from grade school children. I liked to give a little one-on-one attention to children as far as was practical, and so every week or two I would set aside some time to concentrate on assisting an African-American child who liked to make elaborate building projects out of blocks. He was in Kindergarten. One day he turned to me and, out of the blue, said: “uh…you’re black, right?” I told him I wasn’t and asked him why he thought so. “Well, if you’re not black, why do you always talk to me?” he said. He went on to explain that he knew people who he had thought were white and had only recently learned were black, “so now I just guess that people are black”. It’s a strange world we live in. ---
**Author:** ![everton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecb155/32.png) [@everton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/everton)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/32 "2004-03-26T00:49:59Z")
> [@epepke](#): > > However, as has been pointed out, this isn’t cross-cultural. Most African-British sound the same as European-British. It’s also been pointed out that it _is_ cross-cultural. Just because _you_ can’t hear any difference doesn’t mean that _we_ can’t (I’m British and many black people of my acquaintance sound “black” to me). It works in languages other than English too. It isn’t equally noticable among all individuals though. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/33 "2004-03-26T01:31:46Z")
I can tell when I’m talking to a black sounding person. Just like I can tell when I’m looking at an hispanic-looking person. I’m sure I mis-identify frequently, but I never mix the two up. When I _do_ ID a neutrally accented black voice, however, it is because of timbre and resonance–like James Earl Jones, only not quite as profound. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/34 "2004-03-26T02:00:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Although it’s rare, I’ve known white people who flat-out refuse to believe that someone who is obviously African-American is black if they have a “white-sounding” voice. In certain situations, I’ve found myself changing the inflection of my voice just so that people can correctly identify me as a black person. I know someone who thinks Michael Rappaport (white guy from _Higher Learning_ and _Boston Public_) talks “black”. He has an urban accent, but to my ears it isn’t “black”. I can’t think of a white guy that has a black voice. Emimen sounds like an urban white guy. Alex Kingston, the British actress who plays Dr. Corday on ER, has a certain timbre to her voice that makes my ears perk up. When her character first appeared on the show, my television reception wasn’t the best. From her voice, I pegged her as being black. Her character’s romantic chemistry with Dr. Benton didn’t help to change this assumption. Oddly enough, I know a couple of other people who went through the same confusion. ---
**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/35 "2004-03-26T02:09:50Z")
People thought Dusty Springfield, Elvis, and Wolfman Jack were black by hearing their voices. That’s called prejudice, literally pre-judging their skin color by hearing their voice. Lots of prejudice in this thread. Lots. ## Peace. Is my typing coming across as “Black” for you White Folk? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/36 "2004-03-26T02:19:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Lots of prejudice in this thread. Lots. Why don’t we just hang our heads in shame, everyone? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/37 "2004-03-26T02:45:20Z")
You mean my blind black friend who thought I was white just from the sound of my voice was racially prejudiced? And all these people having a reasoned and lively discussion on vocal timbre and intonation are prejudiced as well? Black people who believe can tell other black people by their voices…are actually predjudiced against black people? Whoa. Calm down. Prejudice is > [@dictionary.com](#): > > prej·u·dice ( P ) Pronunciation Key (prj-ds) > n. > > 1 a. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts. > > b. A preconceived preference or idea. > > 1. The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions. See Synonyms at predilection. > > 2. Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion. > > 3. Detriment or injury caused to a person by the preconceived, unfavorable conviction of another or others. None of that is going on here. By the way, what the hell is the highlighted link on the word “friend?” ---
**Author:** ![Mesquite-oh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a183cd/32.png) [@Mesquite-oh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mesquite-oh)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/38 "2004-03-26T05:35:21Z")
A slight highjack but possibly helpful to the discussion. I am an American of Mexican descent who realizes that people can easily tell your ethnicity/race with reasonable accuracy (I know I can). So like many people, I have an “educated white guy” voice/accent ready to go at all times. Just to be on the safe side I use the accent for getting reservations at busy restaurants, getting quotes for services, and other times when I want that lil’ extra edge (don’t ask me why, it would be another thread altogether and not entirely scientific). Of course, using the educated white guy voice/accent in certain parts of town, in certain situations, would not give me an edge, and could possibly be detrimental. My close friends are aware of my changing voice, and they think it is hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/39 "2004-03-26T08:35:17Z")
So, to sum up _some_ of the the points made here, one cannot tell difinitively another persons race, by voice, or skin color. I don’t think that’s in question. In the US, the cultural differences are more pronounced than might be abroad, as far as “accents” go. People learn accents, inflections, and various speech innacuracies through the people that they hear talking most during their formative years. Linguists stop me if I’m wrong. Ebonics is a (usual) dead give-away. Michael Rappaport might be the popular exception, as well as many others. Timbre and inflection are probably more involved in the “80-95%” accuracy of people’s suppositions. This is obviuosly not an exact science. Another factor in this discussion might be “have you ever identified a person as being black, and they were white”? I’m sure that science will prove that no person can definitively identify a persons ethnic background, but they might be statistically accurate as a result of cultural trends. If I’m just stating the obvious, ignore this, I just felt that everyone was saying the same thing, just in a different way. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2004, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302/40 "2004-03-26T14:33:43Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I can detect “blackness” through voice. It’s pitch (we have deeper voices) and something else involved. You’ve obviously never had a chat with Butterfly MacQueen and Tallulah Bankhead. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-tell-just-from-hearing-a-voice-if-a-person-is-african-american/236302.md?page=3)